In this paper, attention will focus primarily on economic and financial aspects of the globalization debate, and on their implications for public policy. Nevertheless, these issues cannot be separated from their historical and political context. The current discussion of globalization can only be understood in relation to the development of economic and political institutions over the past century. Globalization is frequently discussed as a counterpoint to national sovereignty. It is commonly asserted that globalization has eroded national sovereignty or that it (...) has rendered borders obsolete. In particular, it is asserted that, in a globalised world economy, governments have no alternative but to adopt neoliberal economic policies of privatisation, deregulation and reductions in public expenditure. The analysis presented in this paper gives little support to the view of globalization as an exogenous force that has undermined domestic economic sovereignty. On the contrary, financial globalization is best interpreted as the international counterpart of domestic neoliberalism. Both in domestic and international policy, the swing to neoliberalism was a response to the actual and perceived failures of the post-1945 policy framework in which domestic Keynesianism and the welfare state were complemented internationally by the Bretton Woods system. The advocates of neoliberal reform have had only limited success in implementing their policy agenda, even in the English-speaking countries. The choice between continued neoliberal reform and a remodelled social democracy remains open. The direction chosen by democratic governments will ultimately depend on the relative success of competing economic and social models, rather than on an exogenous process of globalization. (shrink)

We argue that the concepts of `human equality' and `inequality' play an important role in the structure of science and philosophy. When the value of `human inequality' predominates, scientific categories are formed in accordance with the principle of `hierarchical differentiation' and concepts remain closely tied to the objects they are referring to. Following Mirowski we define this as the `anthropometric stage' of human thought and development. Contrary, Mirowski's `syndetic stage' refers to societies where the value of `human equality' prevails. Here (...) concepts appear that are universally applicable. However, because of their conventional nature these concepts cannot be `grasped' any longer by human intuition. Between the `anthropometric' and `syndetic' stages, a `lineamentric stage' appears, a period of transition from `human equality' to `human inequality'. Being both a bridge and gap between the two other stages, the `lineamentric' stage contains many contradictions between an `abstract attitude' and `concrete categories'. In this paper we examine the anthropometric, lineamentric and syndetic stages and discuss several examples taken from philosophy, logic, mathematics and physics. (shrink)

More often than not, business ethics textbooks have included sections on "the great economic debate," that is, the discussion of capitalism as a total system, of the criticisms against it and of the proposed alternatives. The reason for such sections is fairly obvious: at some point one has to consider whether or not all the particular problems of employment, of product quality, of environment, of regulation and so on prove beyond solution without a radical change in the basic institutions of (...) society. Since the collapse of real socialism as an alternative in the period 1989–1991, it has become increasingly difficult to have this discussion. Yet we cannot do without the critique of capitalism even if the answer may be that no other economic system is viable at this moment in history. My interest in this paper is to explore how we might now engage in this critique. Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History?" (1989) and Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International (1993) provide a framework for this renewed engagement. (shrink)

Michel Foucault's early works criticize the development of modern democratic institutions as creating a surveillance society, which functions to control bodies by making them feel watched and monitored full time. His later works attempt to recover private space by exploring subversive techniques of the body and language. Following Foucault, pragmatists like Richard Shusterman and Richard Rorty have also developed very rich approaches to this project, extending it deeper into the literary and somatic dimensions of self-stylizing. Yet, for a debate centered (...) on the re-creation of the vision of the self, these discussions have yet to fully engage—even while they set the conditions for this engagement with—issues of posthuman technologies, such as AI, robotics, and genetic engineering. These certainly will constitute the primary engine of public institutional surveillance in the years to come. With this surveillance, the two spheres of private self-fashioning and public institutions will continue to evolve in relation to one another. As they do so, democratic society will change considerably. Perhaps Rorty's own normative and linguistic ideal of conversational maintenance may provide something of a democratic limit case on any future posthuman self-fashioning. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Educating in a convulsed political context demands a detailed analysis of the new circumstances of our times, especially the current democracy crisis. According to the latest reports issued by international evaluation organisations, one of the greatest challenges for democratic citizenship is the emergence and rise of authoritarianism within the framework of the so-called post-democracy, and also in the manifestations known as illiberal democracy. Moral and civic education has to respond to this challenge. With this in mind, we propose revitalising (...) a participative and deliberative democracy model, rethinking the basic values in citizens' education, redefining the relation between what is public and what is private, and empowering sensitivity and free creation in the new maker culture. (shrink)

En este artículo se expone el lugar de Hannah Arendt en el contexto de la Guerra Fría. La historia de las ideas reinantes durante las primeras décadas del siglo XX fue asumida por los estudiosos de la historia de la filosofía y, desde ahí, elaboraron sus explicaciones en torno a la crisis de occidente. Este es el caso de Hannah Arendt quien, además, adoptó la concepción idealista de la historia de la ciencia de los años 50, representada por Alexandre Koyré.

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare many of the inadequacies of our capitalist systems, as Žižek extols in Pandemic! COVID-19 Shakes the World. This essay explores how the capabilities approach, as outlined by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, may be re-examined in the light of this new viral reality by the contributions of Slavoj Žižek and Byung-Chul Han. The capability approach, as it stands, suffers from two missing pieces: that of an acknowledgement of the necessity of negativity as a foil (...) to positivity within the capabilities as articulated by Nussbaum, and the existence of the material root of all capabilities, namely the need to have the capacity to be capable. A “capability for boredom,” and a “zeroth capability” are discussed as solutions, means by which to fill these gaps. Finally, an universal basic income is discussed as a means by which to support the functioning of a “zeroth capability,” the goal being to avoid a descent into bare life during this time of pandemic capitalism. (shrink)

This article argues for the need to recover the concept of political myth in order to understand the crucial phenomena of our epoch. By drawing on Blumenberg’s philosophical reflections on myth, it proposes to understand political myth as the continual process of work on a common narrative by which the members of a social group can provide significance to their political conditions and experience. In order to show how this understanding of political myth can throw light on important aspects of (...) contemporary politics, the article analyses the work on one of the most conspicuous political myths of our time: the clash of civilizations. By reconstructing the mechanisms through which this myth works, the article shows how a paradigm that has been strongly criticized as too simplistic and scientifically inadequate could have turned into a successful political myth, i.e. into a self-fulfilling prophecy. (shrink)

Most theories of nationalism presume a causal link between 'culture' and 'identity' in the analysis of nationalism. This article argues for a more contingent linkage while drawing conclusions for the 'globalization of cultures-national identity' nexus in different theoretical domains. It goes on to review core assumptions about transnational identity formation, arguing that a distinctive phenomenon is a tendency to approach identities as strategic resources. This has significant impact on, for example, perceptions of boundaries and images of belonging. Finally, the article (...) addresses central figurations between identity, globalization and European integration, in the context of the European Union viewed as an instrument for proactively handling transnational problems, and it proposes some salient differences between this 'Euronationalism' and nationalism in more traditional formats. (shrink)

Taking a managerial perspective, this article presents some models of history with a view to draw lessons for leadership and management of organizations and institutions. The suggested models include: evolution of human thought in terms of religions, science and spirituality and their convergence; transitions in society from kingdom–state to nation–state to corporates as state and beyond; creativity view of history; dignity struggle and liberation view of history; ‘fall of the fittest’ view of history; and the swastika analysis of history. The (...) article explores the implications of these models for providing enlightened leadership to organizations and society by creating synergy between influences from the West and the East. (shrink)

This paper is addressed to recent theoretical discussions of the Anthropocene, in particular Bernard Stiegler’s Neganthropocene (Open Universities Press, 2018), which argues: “As we drift past tipping points that put future biota at risk, while a post-truth regime institutes the denial of ‘climate change’ (as fake news), and as Silicon Valley assistants snatch decision and memory, and as gene-editing and a financially-engineered bifurcation advances over the rising hum of extinction events and the innumerable toxins and conceptual opiates that Anthropocene Talk (...) fascinated itself with—in short, as ‘the Anthropocene’ discloses itself as a dead-end trap…”. The objective of this paper is therefore twofold: (1) to discuss how the Anthropocene is appropriated to certain ideological discourses (paradoxically) to maintain the hegemony of precisely those systems of production that have most accelerated climate change etc.; (2) to consider how the factography of the Anthropocene is exploited in this process to mask the ideological character of industry-aligned “technocratic” environmental management. The paper is not concerned with specific case studies in terms of government and industry policy, or climate science, but rather with the ways in which the discourse of the Anthropocene has been inflected within the humanities and the broader cultural field—that is to say, ideologically, as a system or logic of meaning. How the Anthropocene “means” is, in this respect, a question of some importance. This paper does not attempt to address all the facets of this question, but focuses upon a central “apocalyptic” strain in the discourse of the Anthropocene drawn particularly from Francis Fukuyama’s millennial posthumanism and centred in the question of “sustainability” as catastrophe management—with the risk that real environmental degradation will become an alibi for a revived neoliberalism. In other words, that the critical Earth system transformations that characterise the Anthropocene are themselves commodities, and that the project of their amelioration is in process of defining a future (opportunistic) “crisis” rhetoric with a global political franchise. The ideological import of the Anthropocene stems precisely from the fact that it is planetary and, while catalysed by human agency, independent in its specific behaviour from it. The Anthropocene objectively presents as the contemporary counterpart of the Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction and the most compelling argument for a new kind of technological “arms race.” But it also presents as the condition of an emerging ideological discourse which will determine how this race is run. From the discourse on “energy security” to the widespread “security crackdown” on environmental activists across the so-called developed & developing world, the Anthropocene has come to represent the co-option of a scientific factography for the thinly disguised resurgence of “ideological science” of the Fukuyamaesque variety (post-history, post-human). For Fukuyama, the true meaning of “posthuman” is thus the accomplishment of humanity’s historical mission. As the “End of History” designates an end of ideological struggle, so too the dénouement of the Anthropocene and the “ends of man” represent the accomplished purpose of species warfare: dominion, not simply over the world, but over all possible worlds. According to this narrative, science—like technology—must be uniquely at the service of the maintenance of the global order, organised around a universal appeal to “crisis management.” It is precisely for this reason that what calls itself post-human masks the return of an ever-more-apocalyptic Humanism. (shrink)

This paper takes as its starting point the observation of quasi-religious, ‘cultural’ characteristics in the dominant discourse of Western liberal democracy, and of ‘ideological’ characteristics in the discourse of Islamism – noting that both discourses rely, to some extent, upon the notion of rationality. Having provided working definitions of rationality, ideology, and culture, it goes on to argue that culture and ideology may be viewed as discursive macro-strategies which are related to the degree of power enjoyed by a given social (...) system at particular historical moments in time: the former being associated with the consolidation of established power and the latter with a bid to acquire power. It suggests that the general function of cultural and ideological strategies is to mask the underlying irrationalities of free-market democracy and Islamism, respectively, and concludes by considering some of the implications of this view in the context of globalization and the ‘war on terror’. (shrink)

The implementation of cyber-physical and similar systems depends on prevailing social and economic conditions. It is here argued that, if the effect of these technologies is to be benign, the current neo-liberal economy must change to a radically more cooperative model. In this paper, economy change means a thorough change to a qualitatively different kind of economy. It is contrasted with economic change, which is the kind of minor change usually considered in mainstream discourse. The importance of language is emphasised, (...) including that of techno-optimism and that of economic conservatism. Problems of injustice, strife, and ecological overload cannot be solved by conventional growth together with technical efficiency gains. Rather, a change is advocated from economics-as-usual to a broader concept, oikonomia, which takes into account all that contributes to a good life, including what cannot be represented quantitatively. Some elements of such a broader economy are discussed. It is argued that the benefits of technology can be enhanced and the ills reduced in such an economy. This is discussed in the case of cyber-physical systems under the headings employment, security, standards and oligopoly, and energy efficiency. The paper concludes that such systems, and similar technological developments, cannot resolve the problems of sustainability within an economy-as-usual model. If, however, there is the will to create a cooperative and sustainable economy, technology can contribute significantly to the resolution of present problems. (shrink)

The Haitian Revolution is not only one of the most important foundational moments in the emergence of the modern world, but also one of the most neglected within the social scientific literature. In this article, I ask what can be learnt, both from its omission from accounts of events claimed to be of ‘world historical’ significance, and from how social theory would need to be re-thought once we took such events seriously. In particular, I want to examine what is at (...) stake in such rethinking and how we might consider alternative formulations through an approach I call ‘connected sociologies’. (shrink)

This volume - the joint effort of the research groups on practical philosophy and the history of political thought of the Institute of Philosophy of the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences - brings together scholarly essays that attempt to face the challenges of the contemporary situation. The authors come from rather divergent disciplinary backgrounds, including philosophy, law, history, literature and the social sciences, from different cultural and political contexts, including Central, Eastern and Western Europe, (...) and belong to different generations. But they all share an interest to bravely answer the large topical issues concerning universal morality, here and now. (shrink)

In Unfit for the Future, Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu present a sophisticated argument in defense of the imperative of moral enhancement. They claim that without moral enhancement, the future of humanity is seriously compromised. The possibility of ultimate harm, caused by a dreadful terrorist attack or by a final unpreventable escalation of the present environmental crisis aggravated by the availability of cognitive enhancement, makes moral enhancement a top priority. It may be considered optimistic to think that our present moral (...) capabilities can be successfully improved by means of moral education, moral persuasion, and fear of punishment. So, without moral enhancement, drastic restrictions on human freedom would become the only alternative to prevent those dramatic potential outcomes. In this article, I will try to show that we still have reason to be less pessimistic and that Persson & Savulescu’s arguments are fortunately unconvincing. (shrink)

This paper discusses Rawls’s thesis that the social basis of self-respect is one of the primarysocial goods. While the central element of the social basis consists in the attitudes of others(e.g. respect or esteem) the social basis may include also possession of various goods. Further,one may distinguish, following Honneth, universalistic basic respect from differential esteem andfrom loving care. This paper focuses on esteem, and further distinguishes three importantvarieties thereof (anti-stigmatization; contributions to societal goods, projects of self-realization),which all differ from recognition (...) of cultural identity. The normative implications will differ in these different contexts. (shrink)

In a recent paper in Business Ethics Quarterly Professor Jeffrey Moriarty (2005) asserted the relevance of political philosophy to business ethics. Moriarty asked whether "businesses ought to be run (more) like states" and argued why that might be beneficial. This paper on the contrary asserts that there are distinct disadvantages to businesses attempting to be run more like states. Specifically, it asserts that any such an attempt increases the likelihood of the re-emergence of a totalitarian society as businesses currently often (...) act as an intermediary between the individual and the state. The paper contemplates Moeller's ambitions in the Weimar period for the business to be run like a state and the historical outcome of those ambitions. The paper also distinguishes between two different kinds of rights and argues that different kinds of rights pertain to different sectors which preclude business being run like a state. (shrink)

The term 'Asian values' became popular in the political discourse in the 1980s and 1990s. The most vocal proponents of Asian values are Singapore s Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia's Mahathir and their deputies and government officials, as well as post-Tiananmen Chinese leaders. Most notable of all these three strands of the Asian values debate is the 'Singapore School', which 'comprises leaders who have articulated a defence of the Singapore regime, either in their personal or official capacities'. This article discusses (...) the origins and philosophical underpinnings of 'Asian values' in the Singapore context and its relationship to civics education. First, it provides the historical context for the interest in Confucianism and Asian Values. It then looks at the role and use of Confucianism and Asian Values in Asia, before discussing the case of Singapore and Asian values. I explore the interconnections between changes in history, civics and social studies curricula, and the politics of the 'Asian Values' discourse in Singapore which underpins these curricula. At the heart of the issue was the states attempt to forge and articulate a Singaporean identity, and the role of citizenship/moral education in attaining this elusive nation building goal. (shrink)

This article identifies two trends in Dooyeweerd’s conception of ‘cosmic time’, and elaborates their consequences for the philosophy of history. The first trend, connecting time to modal diversity and the order of the modal aspects, prevails in Dooyeweerd’s analysis. The application of the second trend, emphasizing that in each relation frame the temporal order governs subject-subject relations and subjectobject relations, sheds a new light on the interpretation of history conceived of as development of the culture and civilization of mankind. The (...) distinction of faith and religion and the position of the aspect of faith in the order of the modal aspects play important parts in this discussion, in particular with respect to the possibility of transcending time. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders the event in International Relations (IR) through the writings of Hannah Arendt. The event has for too long been neglected in IR; international events are overwhelmingly conceived as mere happenings that have meaning only within the process and temporal structure of the theory from which they are understood, and as holding no or only limited meaning in and of themselves. In her work on political theory and her reflections on totalitarianism, however, Arendt elaborates a rich view of (...) the event and its relationship to history, one that offers an alternative way of thinking about international relations. Arendt urges us to remain open to the possibility, however difficult, of conceiving of the event as meaningful outside of the processes within which our established mode of thoughts would have us subsume it. This requires on the part of the historian a commitment to judgement, to a recognition of the importance of imagination and impartiality that gives meaning to the event for others. In explicating Arendt's complex notion of the genuine political event, the paper aims not merely to demonstrate the intrinsic interest of this conception of the event to her thought, but to add to the small but growing number of works in IR that have found fruitful new avenues of thought in Arendt's various writings, and also to recent discussions on the proper relationship between history and IR theory. (shrink)

I n Citizenshi p an d Migration : Globalizatio n an d th e Politic s o f Belongin g publishe d in 2000 , Alastai r Davidso n an d I showe d tha t globalisatio n an d migratio n thro w u p serious challenge s fo r citizenship . Thi s articl e goe s further , b y examinin g change s resultin g from th e emergenc e o f a ne w constellatio n (...) o f internationa l politics , whic h I refe r t o a s the hierarchica l nation-stat e syste m . Th e bipola r syste m o f th e Col d Wa r i s bein g superseded b y a ne w dichotom y betwee n Nort h an d South , bu t wit h a singl e super-powe r dominating both . Fo r th e firs t tim e i n history , mos t o f th e world ’ s peopl e hav e th e lega l statu s of citizenshi p an d liv e i n politie s wit h th e lega l for m o f democrati c nation-states . Althoug h all nation-state s ar e formall y equa l i n status , ther e i s i n realit y a hierarch y wit h regar d t o such factor s a s internationa l law , rule s o n trade , monopol y o f th e mean s o f mas s destructio n and influenc e o n globa l governance . Thi s make s i t necessar y t o mov e fro m th e notio n of differentiated and contradictory citizenship tha t w e outline d i n 200 0 t o a notio n o f hierarchical citizenship, base d o n shar p difference s i n th e degre e o f empowermen t an d right s tha t citizenship o f variou s type s o f state s confers . Hierarchica l citizenshi p help s t o shap e th e right s and life-chanc e o f differen t group s a t bot h th e nationa l an d internationa l levels . I t i s closely linke d t o discourse s o n th e naturalnes s o f violenc e an d chao s i n th e South , whic h help s to legitimat e Norther n dominance. (shrink)

Bien que la globalisation des dernières décennies se soit développée en parallèle avec les démocraties libérales dans beaucoup de pays jusqu’alors non démocratiques, il aurait été difficile de dire que les processus prédominants de la globalisation néolibérale favorisent le développement de la démocratie globale. Bien au contraire, la globalisation menace la démocratie traditionnelle libérale en créant la nécessité des mécanismes démocratiques supplémentaires. Or, la démocratie supra-étatique des régimes régionaux et globaux, de même que ses instruments et moyens non officiels, tels (...) que le marché global, la communication globale et la société civile globale ont démontré plutôt un déficit qu’un potentiel démocratique. Toutefois, le plus grand problème du rapport entre la démocratie et la globalisation réside dans les différences de cultures et de civilisations. (shrink)

Beginning with a reconsideration of what the school is and has been, this paper explores the idea of the school to come. Emphasizing the governmental role of education in modernity, I offer a line of thinking that calls into question the assumption of both the school and education as possible conduits for either democracy or social justice. Drawing on Derrida’s spectral ontology I argue that any automatic correlation of education with democracy is misguided: especially within redemptive discourses that seek to (...) liberate education from its present enclosure. This rereading of the field of education in the light of an account of the fundamental ontology of its key institution problematizes all rhetorics of education as social salvation. Education, it proposes, cannot be conceived as the ideal soul of a corrupted or as yet defective body, the school. Education—having taken on the character of an ontotheological principle—has become a governmental instrument as much as its specific institutions. This ontological condition can be understood within various accounts of the nature of contemporaneity. This paper considers the monstrous proposal that education be abandoned as the grounds for social, ethical and cultural redemption. The good news is that this abandonment opens the possibility for thinking beyond education, a beyond that is also beyond the strictures of instrumental rationality. (shrink)

This paper explores the potential for an international political theory of care as an alternative to liberalism in the context of contemporary global politics. It argues that relationality and interdependence, and the responsibilities for and practices of care that arise therewith, are fundamental aspects of moral life and sites of political contestation that have been systematically denied and obfuscated under liberalism. A political theory of care brings into view the responsibilities and practices of care that sustain not just ‘bare life’ (...) but all social life, from nuclear and extended families to local, national and transnational communities. It disrupts and challenges the individualism of liberalism, and the associated valorization of ‘freedom’, ‘autonomy’, and ‘toleration’. Instead, it emphasizes an ontology of relationality and interdependence that accepts the existence of vulnerability without reifying particular individuals, groups or states as ‘victims’ or ‘guardians’. Furthermore, by demonstrating the gendered and raced nature of caring in the contemporary world—from the household to the transnational level—an international political theory of care challenges our received assumptions about ‘dependence’ in world politics, and opens up space to interrogate politically not only gender but race and other aspects of inequality in the global political economy. (shrink)

Communism may be dead, but a quasi?Marxist critique of liberal democracy survives in the writings of a number of thinkers ? most notably, David Miller and John Dryzek ? who deplore the self?centered apathy of their fellow citizens and defend the radical ideal of deliberative democracy. Inspired mainly by Rousseau and Habermas, this emergent school of thought argues for a more participatory system where the public interest takes precedence over private interest, and where rational argument replaces cynical manipulation. The paper (...) questions whether the deliberative model can cope with the incalculable complexity of modern society. Deliberative democracy, it is contended, rests on doubtful metaphysical assumptions, a blinkered approach to empirical evidence, and a common misapprehension about the nature of political argument. (shrink)

One of the earliest and most influential papers applying Darwinian theory to human cultural evolution was Donald T. Campbell’s paper “Variation and Selective Retention in Sociocultural Systems.” Campbell’s programmatic essay appeared as a chapter in a book entitled Social Change in Developing Areas (Barringer et al., 1965). It sketched a very ambitious project to apply Darwinian principles to the study of the evolution of human behavior. His essential theses were four.

Can a phenomenologically-founded sociology contribute to the understanding of social change? By reference to the structure of the lifeworld as it has been analyzed by Husserl and Schutz, I argue that human action is formed by temporal, spatial, and social dimensions. These are objectified by a social semantics through which they gain their intersubjective cultural shape. From this perspective, I investigate changes in the temporal, spatial, and social dimensions of this semantics, as they occur in the present transformation of post-socialist (...) societies. Finally, I consider whether these changes mark a return to Western patterns and whether they confirm the thesis of the end of history. (shrink)

Accountability is a significant factor in the soundness of the organisational environment in Australia, for both the public and private sectors. The accountability process rests on the quality and accessibility of organisational records, the information environment. While the Australian liberal democratic open society and free market system relies on accountability, paradoxically accountability is constrained by the needs of the open society and the market. Setting appropriate mechanisms for accountability while preserving civil liberty and innovative free markets is a difficult task, (...) and is one that falls to government. Governments have a ubiquitous role in implementing accountability in both the public and the private sectors, and the Australian federal system further complicates governments'' difficult role. The 1990s will bring further corporate pathologies, similar to those of the 1980''s. However the public and private sectors can reduce the impact of corporate pathologies in the 1990''s by learning the lessons of the 1980''s, through placing a priority on inculcating ethical and moral behavior, emphasising democratic values, and raising the organisational status of records. (shrink)

: Catherine Malabou is a professor of philosophy at Paris-Nanterre. A collaborator and student of Jacques Derrida, her work shares some of his interest in rigorous protocols of reading, and a willingness to attend to the undercurrents of over-read and "too familiar" texts. But, as she points out, this orientation was shared by Hegel himself. Arguing against Heidegger, Kojève, and other critics of Hegel, the book in which this Introduction appears puts Hegel back on the map of the present.

Demokratien geraten zunehmend unter Druck. Dabei wird die Bedeutung von Demokratie selbst zum Gegenstand der Auseinandersetzung. Diese Auseinandersetzungen nimmt der vorliegende Band zum Anlass, die Bedeutung von Demokratie grundsätzlich zu untersuchen. Mit dem Begriff der Konstituenzien sind dabei jene wesentlichen Bedingungen gemeint, die Demokratie ausmachen. Die meisten dieser Bedingungen sind normativ. Was Demokratie ist, wird auch und gerade dadurch bestimmt, was Demokratie sein sollte. Damit geht es um jene Normen, deren Verwirklichung politische Praktiken zu demokratischen Praktiken macht. Sind diese Normen (...) nur eingeschränkt verwirklicht, mindert sich der demokratische Gehalt von Politik. Inwieweit ist dann nun aber eigentlich der Fall? Und was können wir dagegen tun? Antworten auf diese Fragen geben einschlägige Vertreterinnen und Vertreter aus Philosophie, Politik- und Rechtswissenschaft. (shrink)

Public education is not just a way to organise and fund education. It is also the expression of a particular ideal about education and of a particular way to conceive of the relationship between education and society. The ideal of public education sees education as an important dimension of the common good and as an important institution in securing the common good. The common good is never what individuals or particular groups want or desire, but always reaches beyond such particular (...) desires towards that which societies as a whole should consider as desirable. This does, of course, put the common good in tension with the desires of individuals and groups. Neo-liberal modes of governance have, over the past decades, put this particular educational set up under pressure and have, according to some, eroded the very idea of the common good. This set of contributions reflects on this state of affairs, partly through an exploration of the idea of publicness itself – how it can be rearticulated and regained – and partly through reflections on the current state of education in the ‘north’ and the ‘south.’. (shrink)

For more than a thousand years, Islam has been the hostile `other' of the West. Not only does the West feel threatened by Islam, but also many Muslims feel threatened by the West. The dialectical relationship between Islam and the West has gained a new impetus since the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in Manhattan on September I Ith, 2001. A central issue in this dialectic is what is perceived and understood by `Islam' by both (...) Muslims themselves and by non-Muslims. Whilst conflict may suggest support for Samuel Huntington's `Clash of Civilisations' thesis, with Islam as the prime candidate for this clash, this thesis will aim to show that such a clash is a consequence of only one of many understandings of Islamic identity. Islam and the West, it will be argued, are not as incompatible in a civilisational or ideological context as history might suggest. Compatibility can be better appreciated by examining what are regarded by Muslims as key paradigms that make up Islamic identity: that of the Qur'an, Muhammad, Medina as the first `Islamic state', and the four `rightly-guided' (rashidun) caliphs. To be Muslim is to accept certain archetypes as central to belief. This is not what is in contention. However, what is a matter of contention is how one approaches these paradigms, particularly amongst such renowned Islamic revivalist scholars as Mawlana Mawdudi, Muhammad Iqbal, Sayyid Qutb, and Jamal alDin Afghani. This thesis argues that the approach has been dominated by what is termed the `Transhistorical': mythologizing the paradigms to the extent that they have become `idols' which its adherents are unwilling to question or even, if necessary, to shatter. The Muslim philosopher Mawlana Mawdudi will be represented as symbolising this Transhistorical approach. However, another approach can be usefully adopted, that of the Historical, that perceives the paradigms within the context of time and place, thus allowing for flexibility of constant renewal and reassessment. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche can be helpfully employed in examining the Historical approach. Whilst Nietzsche rarely spoke specifically about Islam, his admiration for it as a religion is in sharp contrast to his criticism of Christianity. Whilst Nietzsche was addressing an audience of a different culture and age, this thesis aims to show that his philosophy can make an important contribution to the dialectical understanding between Islam and the West. `Returning' to Islam in what is perceived as its Golden Age is nothing original nor would be seen by Islamists as unorthodox. However, Nietzsche's own originality, creativity, and psychological, philological and historical insights allow for a fresh and enlightening approach to key Islamic paradigms that show that Islam and the West are quite capable of ideological and civilisational reconciliation. (shrink)

This article reviews the implications of the collapse of Communism in Europe for some themes in recent social theory. It was often assumed that 1989 was part of a global process of normalization and routinization of social life that had been left behind earlier utopian hopes. Nothing that utopia is open to various interpretations, including utopias of the everyday, this article suggests, first that there were utopian dimensions to 1989, and, second, that these hopes continue to influence contemporary social and (...) political developments. The continuing role of substantive utopian expectations is illustrated with reference to the politics of lustration in Poland and the rise of nationalist parties in Hungary. This analysis is placed in the context of the already apparent impact of the global economic crisis in post-communist countries. It concludes that the unevenness and diversity of the post-1989 world elude overly generalized attempts at theorization and demand more nuanced analyses. (shrink)

Healthcare professionals face dilemmas regarding maintaining and breaching confidentiality while dealing with victims of sexual violence. The sensitivity of the cases of violence and the aim to prevent harm generates ambiguity for sound ethical and legal decision making. In Pakistan, maintaining silence is often preferred over breaking the silence. Thus, it is essential to view the risks and benefits of the conflicting positions keeping in mind the diverse perspectives and the bigger picture. Organizations, community and government can plan different strategies (...) to put an end to this obscene game of “silence in violence”. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 2, April 2020, Page 201-205.

In the last decades we can observe a large number of ideological changes and hybridizations. In the same time, it has also been developed a new academic field reserved for researching the political ideologies. Nevertheless, a large number of the papers, dedicated to this study, announce the theme of the end of the ideologies. Even if, in the monistic meaning of the term, the ideology lost its legitimacy and postmodernism has abandoned the hard thinking, political ideologies still remain an evident (...) presence. Political ideologies are characterized by continuous diversification and fragmentation produced by the late modernity. In this context, we cannot observe the end of ideologies, but rather a process of multiplying. This fact signifies the complication of the ideological sphere and difficulties in political orientation. In consequence, several roles of political ideologies cannot be performed anymore. According to these theoretical statements, a large number of political ideologies could negatively affect the system of beliefs and the mental short-cuts about social and political reality. A large number of political ideologies create superficial beliefs about social and political life. (shrink)

Purpose. The article is devoted to horror films as forms of anthropological crisis in mass culture, which generate specific meanings and are presented in ways of control over consumer society, as well as act as unconscious ideological mediators of multiculturalism and globalization. Theoretical basis. The main working tool for the analysis of horror films is the method of historical amplification, developed by C. G. Jung, as a basis for comparative analysis of symbolic interpretations of cultural realities and traditions of American (...) horror films. On this basis, the authors propose their own methodological strategy for the analysis of horror films, complementing the theoretical potential of Jungianism with methodological developments of Marxism and neo-Marxism, which can be called "Jung-Marxism". It is distinguished by the orientation and content of socio-cultural phenomena, the essence of which is considered in the context of the interaction of social and archetypal meanings of life of man and society, as well as allows to identify latent unconscious trends in the emergence and functioning of social institutions. With this approach, horror films are not only institutes of production and introduction of fear in consumer society, but also the biotic basis of management at all levels of social communication. Originality. Horror films have a significant impact on the consumer society on the basis of a special mythology, in which the manipulative and propaganda methods of formation and transmission of modern power are sublimated. And the emergence of the horror film genre in American and world cinema means abandoning the model of classical political power based on the sacralisation and rationalization of personal authority and physical coercion. The scientific reflection on the films of this genre allows us to understand the biotic mechanisms of manipulation of social space and the formation of the state of biopower as a new qualitative state of social control. Conclusions. The anthropological model of horror films is concentrated in the following maxim: fear consumes a man a man consumes fear, and the biopower consumes all the subjects of fear consumption, and all their socio-cultural context of communication. Therefore, horror films are a productive means of ideologue-propaganda infection, subsequent deformation and consumer substitution of the mental nucleus of other cultural traditions. (shrink)

This is a translation of Alexandre Koyré’s important, but overlooked essay “Hegel à Iéna.” The essay originally appeared in Alexandre Koyré, Etudes d’histoire de la pensée philosophique. A contribution to the philosophy of time, this essay had a profound but generally unrecognized influence on Alexander Kojève, Jean Hyppolite and Jacques Derrida.

Drawing from secondary literature and three years of fieldwork in various post-conflict societies in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, this article revisits the conceptual development of a term ‘Transitional Justice ’ in order to illuminate the political construction and deconstruction of TJ in international politics. Major patterns and themes are identified within the international thought and practice of TJ to unravel its potentials and pitfalls, with the aim to emphasise the difficulty in ‘defining justice’ in war-torn societies. TJ mechanisms (...) are explored which indicate more culpability for perpetrators and compensation for victims in the midst of authoritarianism and civil wars across the globe. There is an immediate pragmatic need to move beyond rigid and thick legal positivist traditions and going beyond romanticising ‘liberal’ values that TJ represent in arriving at an epistemological understanding about TJ. As such, and drawing from poststructuralist intellectual strands in International Relations, this article illuminates the unstable binary distinction between the idea that both law and politics represents in ‘defining’ TJ. (shrink)